Residents of the entire town of Cache Creek, a critical junction of major B.C. highways, were ordered to flee east to Kamloops on Friday as a fast-moving fire raced toward the community from the south. The fire was just one of several that have razed buildings, led to evacuation orders in several communities in central […]

A man took an indirect hit from lightning Tuesday morning while working in the Fort Victoria RV Park, says View Royal Fire Department’s acting chief. The lightning struck a tree about 9:30 a.m., and the current travelled through the ground and made contact with the man, Rob Marshall said. The man’s condition is not known. […]

Millionaire homeowners cashing out of Metro Vancouver’s red-hot real estate market are seeking greener pastures elsewhere in B.C. Real-estate experts say they’re seeing more city slickers selling off their urban homes and heading north or east to buy hobby farms and acreages, where they can live off the land with cash to spare.

After a decade of rising forest-fire risks due to climate change and another budget-busting year of wildfire fighting, the province is boosting its fire prevention efforts with a one-time $85 million injection of resources. The funding will be administered by a newly announced forest enhancement society made up of former industry and civil-service professional foresters, Minister of Forests Steve Thomson said Friday.

Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett will unveil details of a promised rescue package for British Columbia’s struggling mining industry at an event Friday morning in Williams Lake. It will likely involve an option to defer BC Hydro bills.

A showdown over the leadership of Vancouver-headquartered Taseko Mines Ltd. gained momentum Wednesday when another significant investor spoke out in support of an activist’s attempt to oust three directors it views as having too close a relationship with a third-party firm. Chicago-based investment firm Raging River Capital LLP is arguing that Taseko directors Ronald Thiessen, the board’s chairman, CEO Russell Hallbauer, and Robert Dickinson are in conflict over their relationship with private mining firm Hunter Dickinson Inc. (HDI), where they also serve as directors.

People have to be ready for the truth before it can be revealed. That’s a theme of the riveting, award-winning movie, Spotlight, which recounts how the Boston Globe newspaper laid bare an ecclesiastical and political coverup of rampant pedophilia by more than 87 Roman Catholic priests and brothers.

Former Vancouver Sun editor and news reporter Ron Rose, who broke ground on covering First Nations, died Wednesday in Vancouver at age 96. As Rose liked to quip, he was “born in Winnipeg at an early age” and moved out west as a small boy.

Wednesday’s agreement between Premier Christy Clark and Alaska Gov. Bill Walker promising protection for shared environments from new mining developments on trans-boundary salmon rivers won’t quell the grassroots opposition swelling in the Northern U.S. state. In fact, it might even make things more difficult for B.C.’s ambitious northwest development plans. Alaskan First Nations, fishing and environmental groups are already signalling a desire to trigger U.S. federal intervention through the International Joint Commission under the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty. What happened to the Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines — once promoted as a sure thing to carry Alberta’s oilsands crude to tidewater — might serve as a cautionary examples.

Rapidly rising water levels in a vast containment pit at the Mount Polley mine are now a scant six metres below the level where they could seep into groundwater and the Quesnel River system. Bigger worries loom for spring. Winter snow melt could overwhelm storage capacity causing another catastrophic spill like August 2014, when a breach dumped 10 billion litres of water and 4.5 billion litres of slurry into Polley Lake.

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